LONDON

London is interesting to draw in a much ‘slower’ way than somewhere like New York. London feels quaint compared to New York, as if it were weighed down by its own history and by the lower quality of light. I feel the weight of the years of the buildings in London, so my London drawings have a different speed to the New York ones. When drawing a building in London I feel its deep foundations and how it has been there for years, I’m almost drawing the solidity of it, even though i sometimes lighten things up to just capture what I feel is the essence of it, which ultimately feels light to me. London doesn’t have the upward speed that New York has, in London it’s more about weight, as if the air were heavier and a little more dense. The light is different from the southern Europe and the US and the sun is lower. This makes a huge difference to my work and to the way I respond to the canvas or paper . In London I move slower, as if there was more time to draw and contemplate, to weigh things up and to weigh them down in the drawing, as if I wanted to put the feeling of the bigger density inside the marks I’m making so it is transmitted by the drawing. I tend to not do this on purpose, it’s quite instinctive to me to respond in this way to the energy of London and of the UK in general.